Update 3/14/18 - Don't panic! Read on:
It's just not possible to repair SPWF to the grandeur that the community justly expects in 6 weeks. That said, we have found someone who has stepped forward to run a smaller-scale event on those days so that the Steampunk community has an entertaining, fun, and casual event to attend. We, SPS, are in the midst of planning a new large-scale event for a future date that will be able to be held up to the lofty standards of SPWF. Communication has been spotty and we apologize for that. Here is the TL;DR:

There will be a smaller-scale event held on May 4 - 6, 2018. It will be smaller scale and details are being fleshed out - expect a plan to be announced within 72 hours.

SPS is planning a new event for the future, tentatively the fall, that will be better organized and better planned than what we could have done in 6 weeks or less.

We would love your help, advice, and input on both of these events to make sure that you, the community, are happy with them. We admit that SPWF was too much for us to take on this quickly - and we are asking for your help to bring it back as much as we can for the future.

According to our source, the convention has not cancelled its contracts with the venues or it would face a large cancellation fee. The hotels themselves are not going to break the contract, which means that nothing else can be booked into that space. Because of this, Steampunk World's Faire still is still financially responsible for the space and is planning to have a small event in order to encourage people not to cancel hotel rooms. The more rooms are cancelled, the larger bill they will receive due to not filling the hotel block in the contracts.

The source also states that the sales departments of the convention hotels have confirmed that attendees only have 72 hours to cancel their reservations or the single-night deposit for their rooms will be charged.

Anyone with a room booked may wish to cancel now in order to avoid losing their deposit. If, for some reason, you want to re-book at a later date, there's an excellent chance that there will be plenty of rooms available.

Every year, in the first week of January, AnimeCons.com takes a look back at the previous year to see which anime conventions were the largest in North America, how the numbers have changed, what may have caused the changes, and if there's any trends that may affect other anime conventions or fan conventions as a whole. As we always remind people, this absolutely is not meant to be a list of the "best" anime cons, but merely the largest.

Before we present the list, an explanation is needed for the different ways that conventions count their attendance:

The most common method for conventions, but one that is very misleading, is used by most non-anime conventions and trade shows. A "turnstile" attendance count method counts people multiple times for every day of the convention that they attend. For example, if there are 10,000 people at a three day convention each day, they would report their attendance as 30,000...as if each of those 10,000 people passed through a turnstile once per day. A four day convention with 10,000 people each day would report a turnstile attendance count as 40,000 people. Although anime conventions are starting to report turnstile numbers, they are often offered in addition to one of the following two counting methods. Although this site considers turnstile counts to be misleading and disingenuous, we've recently started listing them in order to be able to help people distinguish the difference and be able to compare attendance numbers more fairly.

Another method is to count each person who was issued a badge. This is often referred to as "total attendance", "badge count", or a "warm body count". This will include attendees, staff, press, vendors, guests, and anyone else who was wearing a convention badge. If the people attended multiple days, they just get counted once. It does not include people without a badge such as convention center-provided security, hotel employees, or custodial staff.

The final method commonly used to report attendance is a paid attendance count. This simply counts the number of people who paid for a badge. Unlike the warm body count, it doesn't include staff, guests, press, or others with a badge...unless they paid for it. This method also only counts people once even if they're attending multiple days.

All the attendance figures we present in this report and on AnimeCons.com have been provided by convention staff members themselves. They have been announced on the convention's own web sites, on the convention's social media, reported directly to this site, or one of our site's staff have reported back a number officially announced by an authorized representative at the convention (such as announced at closing ceremonies). None of these numbers are guesses by AnimeCons.com staff and none have been pulled from anonymous sources such as unsourced Wikipedia entries. Where attendance is marked as "approximately" signifies that the number reported by the convention is likely rounded and not an exact count.

Our annual list also only consists of conventions with a primary focus on anime. This means that multi-genre conventions are not included. We also do not include conventions such as comic cons or sci-fi cons that have anime programming. To include those in this list would be impossible due to the number of those conventions in existence, the unavailability of attendance numbers for many of them, and the vast differences in counting methods. Anime conventions that share admission with non-anime conventions (such as comic, steampunk, or video game conventions) are also not included on this list because it is impossible to tell how many are attending the anime part of the convention.

Anime Expo safely holds onto the top spot for the 14th year in a row. The vast difference between Anime Expo's attendance and the other conventions on the list means that it will likely hold this spot for years to come. In 2017, they grew by 7,238 attendees. Their turnstile attendance count was also up 52,379 to 357,178. While overcrowding and lines remain a common complaints among Anime Expo attendees, it continues to be a convention that many people (particularly those outside California) tend to put on their bucket lists.

For the second year in a row, there's a different convention climbing into the #2 spot. Anime Matsuri in Houston, Texas has reported an increase of 6,055 attendees and yet another year of reporting more than 20% growth. However, as we've said in previous years, the growth rate simply cannot continue in such a competitive market as Texas where popular conventions in nearby Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio markets are also gaining attendees and even more conventions continue to appear every year.

Speaking of Texas, the #3 spot is once again held by the longest continually running anime convention in North America, A-Kon. The convention has reported a 1.42% growth rate over their 2016 convention. They had reported greater than 10% growth rate for the previous three years, so the slower growth this year may be attributed to the convention's 30 mile move from Dallas to Fort Worth. However, A-Kon continues to be a popular destination for anime fans every June.

Anime North in Toronto, Ontario holds onto the #4 spot for the second straight year. This year, they reported a warm body attendance count of 32,167. Last year's attendance was reported as 29,973 paid attendees, so we're not able to compare the two years to calculate a growth percentage, but it would appear to be up.

Moving up another spot this year, Anime Weekend Atlanta, another of the longest running anime cons in North America, comes in at #5. Although we didn't have a warm body count for them last year, their paid attendance count is up 3.79% from 28,789. This is slower growth than the past few years where AWA had reported more than 10% growth.

Although it was in the #3 spot last year, Anime Central near Chicago drops to #6 in 2017. The convention's attendance has dropped 3.97% from 2016's 31,469 warm bodies. The convention had rather significant growth in 2013, but was seeing less than 5% growth since then. This is the first reported attendance decrease at Anime Central.

Anime Boston moves up a spot to #7 this year even with an attendance drop of 4.18%. The turnstile attendance count dropped 5.19% to 74,578, which would seem to indicate that more people that more people were buying 1-day badges. This is the second straight year that Anime Boston's attendance has dropped and it's likely still attributable to increased convention center security following guns that were seized during an August 2015 Pokemon Championship at the venue which resulted in excessively long security lines at Anime Boston 2016. Although the security checkpoints were improved in 2017, a number of attendees had cited the lines as a reason for sitting out a year to see if the situation would improve. For the most part, it has, and hopefully those attendees return again in 2018.

Seattle's Sakura-Con reported approximately 25,000 attendees in 2017. Last year's attendance was reported as 23,000 which is an 8.70% growth rate and puts them up a spot to #8.

By now, you may have wondered what happened to Otakon on this list. In 2015, it dropped to #5 with the largest attendance drop we've ever seen by any convention. It held onto the #5 spot last year and grew to 29,113 warm bodies in 2016. The convention moved from Baltimore to Washington, DC in 2017 and it seems that the attendees did not follow. Otakon lost over 4,000 attendees and dropped to #9 on our list and is no longer the largest anime convention on the East Coast. With Otakon Vegas not reporting large growth over its first few years, hopefully Otakorp has planned for rainy days such as this in order to be able to handle the situation financially.

Detroit's Youmacon returns to our list for the second year in a row at #10 with a paid attendance of 22,142, up 1,106 people from 2016. Last year, Youmacon and Otakuthon were essentially tied for the 10th spot, but Youmacon has now pulled ahead slightly.

For #11, we head back up into Canada for Otakuthon in Montreal. The bilingual convention reported 750 more people than 2016 for growth of 3.52%. Magnifique!

The twelfth anime con on our list just held their first convention in November, Anime NYC. On their site after the convention (although now only available via archives), Peter Tatara, the Event Director, was quite clear about their attendance reporting saying, "Anime NYC welcomed over 20,000 fans. That's not turnstile, but 20,000 unique, individual fans who came together to celebrate what we all love." (This was likely noted due to some otherNYCcons which have been known to report turnstile numbers.)

It's worth noting that there is less than a 10% difference (or only 2,881 people) between the third through sixth conventions. There is also a difference of less than 1,000 people between the seventh and ninth conventions on the list, which just about puts them in a three-way tie.

As always, we remind you that these are merely the largest conventions and are not necessarily the best. If past history is any indication, this list is almost guaranteed to be copied and used as some other site's "Best Anime Cons" list. That's a shame because there are some absolutely wonderful small and mid-sized conventions out there that are not mentioned on this list. You can have a lot of fun at smaller events and we strongly urge you to find the conventions near you and try them out.

The 10,000th convention to be added was Con Nichiwa 2018 which is scheduled to take place in April 2018 in Tucson, Arizona. The first Con Nichiwa took place in 2010.

The database of 10,000 conventions (which counts individual years of over 3600 different conventions) includes fan conventions around the world going as far back as 1936, there are still many, many more conventions out there. Any convention organizers who don't see their conventions listed can submit them. After the submission is reviewed for accuracy, the information will be added.

The FanCons.com site also has a database of guests which recently passed 6,400 guests with the addition of actress Lindsay Jones who is known for her voice roles including Ruby in RWBY, Kimball in Red vs. Blue, and more.

Behind the scenes, FanCons.com and AnimeCons.com are currently in the process of being re-written from the ground up. The new sites will not only present an updated UI with a mobile-responsive interface and improve the functionality of some existing features such as the user-submitted convention rating system. The new sites will also offer a number of new features which will be announced at a later date. The screenshot of Con Nichiwa accompanying this article was taken from the new site.

Christopher Ayres is well known in the anime convention community for his "Mock Combat for Cosplay" workshops. He has also been invited to conventions to talk about his role as Frieza in Dragon Ball Z and his directing work on anime titles such as Nerima Daikon Brothers, Beyond the Boundary, Another, and Bodacious Space Pirates. As of 2017, he has been a guest at 137 conventions.

Unfortunately, Chris has been diagnosed with "End Stage C.O.P.D." and is facing a double lung transplant, multiple surgeries, and significant medical treatment. He's in need of financial help from the community. Anime Detour has established a YouCaring fund which will go to Chris to help pay for what will surely be overwhelming medical expenses.

Earlier this year actor/director Christopher Ayres was rushed to a Houston hospital with complicated respiratory difficulties. A team of pulmonary doctors diagnosed Chris with "End Stage C.O.P.D.", an irreversible illness that would require a double lung transplant in order for him to survive. He would spend the next three months in and out of hospitals and intensive care units for testing, therapy, and rehabilitation. In preparation for transplant, he learned that he would also need two additional surgeries (double bypass, and oral maxillofacial) before he can move forward with transplant.

Chris is dependent on continuous flow oxygen during the day and a BIPAP breathing machine to reduce carbon levels in his lungs at night. Due to hospitalization, and rehabilitation Chris has not been able to work since March. In spite of being insured, the deductibles, and non covered expenses have been continuous, and are exhausting his and his family's resources. While it's hard to determine exactly how much assistance will be needed at this stage of the process, these costs have become a concern.

Chris has been a long time friend to both the anime and convention community. known for roles such as Frieza in Dragon Ball Z in recent years, and has directed several well loved anime titles including; The Nerima Daikon Brothers, Beyond the Boundary, Another and Bodacious Space Pirates. Since he has always been a strong supporter of Anime Detour, and one of the first to grab the mic at it's charity auctions, we would like to begin what will be the first of probably many fundraisers across various platforms to help him with these expenses. We would appreciate any help you can give us as we try to help someone who has given so much to our community.</p>

As of this post, $2,097 has been raised by 61 donors. The fund has a $25,000 goal. We encourage anyone who has enjoyed Chris's work in anime or his convention programming to give what they can in his time of need. Let's show Chris that we want more of his love and laughter. Always.

Wizard World has issued a press release to announce the cancelation of five of their remaining seven 2017 conventions. They have also announced their 2018 locations which include the five cancelled cities.

Conventions in Biloxi, Montgomery, Peoria, Springfield, and Winston-Salem have all been cancelled. These five conventions were only recently announced and in smaller venues than Wizard World is normally held. These "postponed" events are planned to be held sometime in October or November 2018. Although Wizard World will refund tickets for the convention, this leaves some fans who were planning to fly in with non-refundable airline tickets.

In total, nine Wizard World conventions were announced and cancelled in 2017. This is more than any previous year. Twelve conventions have taken place this year with two remaining conventions for the rest of 2017.